Blue carbon pathways in West Antarctic fjords.

Abstract

Habitats in polar regions are among the most severely affected by climate change, especially due to temperature rises, resulting in losses from glaciers, ice shelves, and sea-ice extension and concentration (Barnes et al., 2018). Until 2014, the trends for the Southern Ocean (SO) showed marked regional differences with clear temperature increments and ice losses (blueing) around the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas, and the opposite trend (whitening) in the Ross Sea and eastern Weddell Sea (Parkinson, 2019). However, since 2014, the general trend for the SO is that of blueing (Parkinson, 2019). The changes in terms of ice cover and extension have quickly and profoundly affected benthic fauna, community structure, biological traits, and ecosystem services they provide across multiple spatial (e.g. Barnes et al., 2018) and temporal scales (e.g. Pineda-Metz et al., 2020). The recent paper of Zwerschke et al. (2021) is one of the latest publications dealing with temporal changes of benthic fauna ecosystem services in relation to glacier loss in fjords of the west Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), and aims to gain a more holistic quantification of carbon gains driven by glacier retreat.